190. That Sound May be the Cat Wheezing or it May be a Radiator

o & . . . a dot.

O, & a loop thru a loop

@ & a plate
or the handle
of a cup and a
finger imagined
slipping through it

0 & the wide range of nothing
spread before us in the shape of possibility

the clicking of a night
through the forms of our attention:
crack of a fire in a log
tick of a clock
creak in a stepping through it
clank of a radiator

hearing suddenly the sounds
surrounding the pattern of our listening

the world suddenly upon us
as if it were real

in the shape
of the sound
of the breathing
of night
we can hear the sleeping of birds

large dry leaves
have become the bills we use
to pay our debts
and we count them carefully out
though we cannot
fold them back into our pockets

we realize only eventually
that we are no longer away
the fiction of our dreams
sufficiently real to worry us
into believing each were happening

leaves large enough
to be tobacco
but a dream that is empty of scent

arriving
at a train station
is a train
pulling the end
of a train

what goes
in order is
what comes
in the form
of forgetting

every blank space
in our lives
is a memorial
to our extravagant
forgetting

care being taken
not to remember
too much of what
has happened lest
we be forced
to relive it

a dream is
that part of a life
we lose
upon waking

that is why
it’s best not to
have a dream
of any kind

the last dream
I remember
was of a home
I didn’t own
in the process
of renovation

the night can’t
hold everything in

something
has to slip into daylight